Standard Member

I make my own recordings, and very often record in 24/96 or even 24/192. I burn my material to dvd-audio discs. my dv27a, however, seems to downsample digital output to 48khz on dvd-a discs, making the use of a separate d/a converter pointless for these discs.

I might expect this of the Diva line, since it's not the "pro" line and consumer machines should have certain copy protection methods in place. But why does the dv27a do this? Is there any way this could be changed in future firmware?

Even cheap toshibas and panasonics can output a full 24/96 for dvd-audio discs...

(note: i know it can output 24/96 on dvd-video discs. i want it to do the same for dvd-audio discs)

Well-known Member

I believe you cannot output MLP audio digitally due to copyright protection reasons. That's why the player has analogue outputs, the DVD-A soundtrack is decoded onboard the player and then sent via six analogue interconnects to the DVD-A inputs on the AV8, the same also applies to stereo too. The Toshiba and Panasonic machines will not output the MLP track uncompressed either over the digital output. As for the digital output on the player, there is an option to downsample everything to 48kHz which you may have turned on. go into the setup menu and switch this option to 96kHz.

Standard Member

I believe you cannot output MLP audio digitally due to copyright protection reasons. That's why the player has analogue outputs, the DVD-A soundtrack is decoded onboard the player and then sent via six analogue interconnects to the DVD-A inputs on the AV8, the same also applies to stereo too. The Toshiba and Panasonic machines will not output the MLP track uncompressed either over the digital output. As for the digital output on the player, there is an option to downsample everything to 48kHz which you may have turned on. go into the setup menu and switch this option to 96kHz.

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these discs are NOT MLP encoded. it's simple 2 channel PCM

I'm aware of the option to downsample to 48, and this is for dvd VIDEO discs only, not dvd-a discs (the manual even says: This setting is relevant only to the output from DVD-video discs.). My player is set to 96khz. but the digital output of the 2 channel PCM from all dvd-a discs is still downsampled to 48khz

but yes, the toshiba and panasonics can send a 24/96 PCM signal from a dvd-a disc over the digital output

Member

This is nothing to do with MLP encoding which is always converted to PCM inside the player. It is to do with the resolution of the resultant PCM that is allowed to be output via the SPDIF digital output.

On DVD-Video discs the DV27A can output 2 channel 24 bit 48kHz PCM and, where allowed by the copy protection flags, 24 bit 96 kHz if that is recorded on the disc (very few discs have this though). It can of course output DD and DTS streams too, as can just about all DVD players.

On commercial DVD-Audio discs with copy protection (I.e. just about all of them) it outputs 16 bit 44.1 or 48 kHz PCM whatever the original resolution on the disc. So will Panasonic ands Toshiba players, I absolutely guarantee it. This is because that is all that is permitted under the DVD-Audio licence. Your point about home made recordings is interesting though - what SW allows you to record to DVD-A standards?

Anyway you will have to use the analogue outputs on your DV27A - that is what they are there for. They decode using the full resolution present on the DVD-A disc and, because the master clock used to drive the 27A's DACs very low jitter and is in the player so it does not have to be reconstructed downstream in a processor, they are of higher fidelity too. It is not always well understood that external DACs using SPDIF are often weak when it comes to reconstructing the master clock.

Standard Member

Scott -
On commercial DVD-Audio discs with copy protection (I.e. just about all of them) it outputs 16 bit 44.1 or 48 kHz PCM whatever the original resolution on the disc. So will Panasonic ands Toshiba players, I absolutely guarantee it. This is because that is all that is permitted under the DVD-Audio licence.
Your point about home made recordings is interesting though - what SW allows you to record to DVD-A standards?

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There are many ways to record audio up to 24/96 or 24/192. Some affordable programs that will author dvd-a discs are Wavelab 5 or the Discwelder programs from Minnetonka. One of these is even under US $100, so it's becoming pretty easy to author your own DVD-A discs.

These players will output a 24/96 signal over the spdif out from dvd-a discs (no copy protection):

Anyway you will have to use the analogue outputs on your DV27A - that is what they are there for. They decode using the full resolution present on the DVD-A disc and, because the master clock used to drive the 27A's DACs very low jitter and is in the player so it does not have to be reconstructed downstream in a processor, they are of higher fidelity too. It is not always well understood that external DACs using SPDIF are often weak when it comes to reconstructing the master clock.

HTH.

John Dawson (Arcam)

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Again, thanks. I was hoping to feed a 24/96 digital output to a Benchmark Media Systems or Mytek Digital DAC (both companies manufacture equipment for recording engineers.) I love the Arcam sound, but the ability to feed the full spdif signal through a reference headphone amp like the Benchmark DAC-1 or another DAC was something I was hoping for as well

Standard Member

I have a question to John Dawson, I have Arcam DV79 HDMI and Arcam AVR300

I`m about to buy the Benchmark DAC-1 in order to make the analogue audio ( 2-channels )sound much better! Do you think that his is the right way to go? How is the DAC-1 compare to DV79 ( the DAC-s inside DV79 ) ?

"The Benchmark was slightly more articulate in the musical line, and slightly more detailed in spatial nuances, particularly the localization of individual images in space, and in soundstage depth. Not night-and-day differences, to be sure, but the race was won by at least a nose. On CDs. The Benchmarkand you are shocked, shockedof course cannot decode DSD digital data, of which there isn't much outside the professional realm anyway, as SACD players do not output DSD. "